Tue, 10 May 2005

Political power comes from a willingness of one person to cooperate
with another simply because they agree on a goal. Economic power
comes from someone having a sufficient quantity of resources that they
can trade with other people to achieve a goal they may not agree on.
These two types of power are fundamentally different. Economic power
can be consumed. Political power cannot. Economic power is created
by the slow process of wealth creation. Political power can be
created in a moment by the action of a mob.

A wealthy person does not automatically have economic power.
Simply buying something is not expressing one's economic power. You
have to buy something whose value others do not agree with. For
example, if you build an ordinary house in an ordinary location, you
are simply buying a house. If you hire Frank Lloyd Wright to create
Fallingwater,
you are using your economic power to create something that perhaps
nobody values but you.

If you believe, as I do, that the best society is created when
power (of all stripes) is widely distributed, then you'll prefer
economic power to political power. The process of exercizing economic
power acts to redistribute it. Political power, however, tends to
become concentrated. Look at the USA. Its Constitution was designed
to specifically prevent the federal government from becoming a
concentration of power, and yet it happened anyway.

There seems to be only one way to disperse political power:
splitting up.